Already in the Congress held in Rome in 1951 (World Congress of Documentation - XVIII International Conference) are beginning to establish the foundations of an international activity that takes the form of active collaboration under the leadership of UNESCO. Around the 60s UNESCO initiates the discussion of its General Programme for Information (PGI), within which will be born, in 1971, the programme World science information system (UNISIST - Commission for the Unification of information systems) , based on the following premises: "The scientific information is the heritage of humanity in the field of knowledge. It is an essential resource for the work of researchers: it is a cumulative resource; the knowledge generates knowledge progressively with the new discoveries. Finally, it is an international resource, laboriously accumulated by researchers in each Country, of every race, language, color, religion or political conviction. It is constituted and is used internationally. The researchers which produce and use the information require that the contribution of each can be checked; it is therefore not only a resource, but also a necessary tool for scholars of all Countries for the progress of their discipline. (UNESCO, 1971).

In the meantime Paolo Bisogno creates  the ISRDS  in 1968, previously known under the name Laboratory studies on research and documentation; from 1975 called definitely Institute for Studies on Research and Scientific Documentation). Bisogno realizes that the binomial research-scientific information is successful, and perceives the open questions in that historical period of the scientific research system. In the first five years of life of the institute he starts to carry out the following projects:

1970: Feasibility study for the project UNISIST

1970: Project CDU (Italian translation of the Universal Decimal Classification)

1971: Union catalogue of periodicals at national level (ACNP, destined to become the first Italian collective catalogue and still fully active)

1971: Bibliographic database   for the sector of scientific policy

1972: Statement to the cataloguing of periodicals (production of the UNI 6392 rule,  alphabetic catalogues of periodicals, published in 1976)

1972: Testing of library automation programmes.

In 1972 ISRDS  actually starts the Project of the  National Collective Periodicals Archive identified by the acronym ACNP - finished operationally two years later - in order to meet the expanding demand, particularly from the national system of scientific research and the University , to be able to locate the serials in Italian libraries  and get consequently a faster access to documents. For this and other projects relating specifically in computer science Bisogno takes advantage of the brilliant cooperation of the engineer Antonio Petrucci, who was responsible for some of the most forward-looking achievements of the technological development and library automation in Italy.

In the international field Paolo Bisogno  followed personally the work of the UNISIST, as Italian delegate of the International Federation for Documentation (FID) and Italian delegate and vice president of the Committee for the lnformation and Scientific and Technological Documentation  (STIDC) of the EEC (1). The Central Committee of the UNISIST in a report addressed to the General Director of UNESCO and the President of ICSU (Conseil international des unions scientifiques) expressed for the first time explicitly the need to form an "international register of scientific journals as the basis a system for the normalization of citations of the periodical literature ... "

The feasibility study for this project was entrusted to INSPEC (Information Service for the Physics and Engineering). The final report of the study recommended the creation of an international system for recording data of serials (International Serials Data System - ISDS) and outlined in broad terms its operation. The report's recommendations were accepted. UNESCO and the Government of the French Republic signed an interim agreement in July 1972 to provide funds for the establishment and operation of the International Centre established in Paris. The final agreement was signed in November 1974 and became official in January 1976 after the French parliament had ratified the statutes (2). In 1975 the ISO published the first edition of the standard 3297 which laying down the framework of the system for the identification of serial publications.

(1) Carla Basili - Emanuela Reale, Scientific Documentation and documentation on science in the mission of ISRDS, AIDAinformazioni, 21 (2003), 3; (2) Matilde Salimei, Ten years of the ISDS system, Notebooks CNR-ISRDS 17/18, 1986

Since July 1974, the ISRDS - pursuant to the leading role that covered in the ACNP project  ACNP and the European tasks held by its director Paolo Bisogno  - became part of the project UNISIST of UNESCO and for government decisions would have founded and organized the ISDS National Centre which would be then the Italian member of the international ISSN network. From its origins to today the Italian ISSN Centre has always had its headquarters in Rome at the CNR; first director of the Centre was Matilde Salimei.

The Italian Centre since 1977 began an intense and capillary work   to enrich the core of the initial catalogue, originally established in 2910 by periodical publications, correlating closely with the Italian library institutions - and, above all, with the collective system ACNP - to place easily of the editorial documentation  useful to the identification of periodicals and collections.

In 1985 the International ISDS Centre and the Association internationale de  numerotation des articles "(EAN, now GS1) signed an agreement - still in force today - thanks to which the identification code ISSN would be officially adopted by the system of optical recognition EAN (barcode bars) to be applied in the marketing of serials. In Italy, the massive and widespread use   of the barcode for the marketing of magazines, periodicals, collections and so on. finally took off only in 2006, following a sector agreement signed between  national associations of newspaper publishers, newspaper vendors, distributors.

The original name of the identification system (International Serials Data System - ISDS) in 1993 has been modified in the current International standard serial numbering - ISSN.

The first directors of the Italian ISSN Centre :

- Matilde Salimei, 1975-1990 at CNR –ISRDS

- Enrico Novari, 1990-1994 at CNR –ISRDS

- Gianfranco Bianchi, 1994 -1998 at CNR –ISRDS

- Giliola Negrini, 1998-2004 at CNR -ISRDS then CNR- ISPRI

- Giovinella Mazzei, 2004-2005 CNR-ISPRI then CNR-DCSPI (Office Support to Scientific Network)

Since November 2005, the ISSN Centre  works at the Central Library in the National Research Council, and is under the responsibility of the Director pro tempore of the Library.

National Research Council, National Centre of Scientific-Technical Documentation, World Congress of documentation: Rome, September 15-21 ,1951, Rome: [National Research Council], 1951. Extracted from: The Scientific Research, 21 (1951), 10 .

UNESCO, UNISIST: study report on the feasibility of a world science information system, Paris, UNESCO, 1971 // UNESCO, UNISIST: étude sur la réalisation d'un système mondial d'information scientifique, Paris, UNESCO, 1971.

Margherita Salimei, Ten years of the ISDS system, Quaderni ISRDS 17-18 (1986), pp. 189-197.

Rossella Dini, The cataloguing of periodicals in Italy, Biblioteche oggi , 1993, 2, February

Maria Pia Carosella, Documentation and women in Italy: between memories and history, AIDAinformazioni, 21 (2003), 1, January-March

Carla Basili - Emanuela Reale, Scientific Documentation and documentation on science in the mission of ISRDS, AIDA information, 21 (2003), 3, July-September

Paola Castellucci, Paolo Bisogno : the early foundation of the discipline of documentation, AIDAinformazioni, 21 (2003), 3, July-September

Flavia Cancedda,  The system in Italy, AIB Studi, 52 (2012), 3, September-December

Historical series of ISO and UNI standards on the ISSN:

- ISO 3297:1975, Documentation – International standard serial numbering (ISSN); then replaced by:

ISO 3297:1986, Documentation – International standard serial numbering (ISSN); then replaced by:

ISO 3297:1998, Information and documentation – International standard serial number (ISSN); then replaced by

ISO 3297:2007, Information and documentation – International standard serial number (ISSN); confirmed in 2011 and in force.

- UNI ISO 3297:2010, Information and documentation – Standardized international system for the numbering of serials; in force.